Municipal ID Bill Also a Boon to Transgender New Yorkers

Legislation to create a city-issued identification card for illegal immigrants and others could benefit transgender New Yorkers as well, by allowing them to self-identify by gender.

The municipal ID legislation passed by the City Council on Thursday is primarily geared toward helping expand access to city services for the city’s estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants. But it extends protections to other marginalized groups as well, including transgender New Yorkers who will be able to obtain a city ID that lists their chosen identity.

City officials said they believe the legislation is the first of its kind in the U.S. Other cities, such as Oakland, Calif., have ID programs that don’t require residents to list a gender. In New York, residents can list their gender as they please — man, woman, or something else.

“Trans people and undocumented people have a lot of crossover and commonalities,” said Sasha Buchert, a staff attorney with the Transgender Law Center in Oakland, Calif. “Many of us have to live in the shadows as well.”

“For transgender people, having ID that matches who they are is essential to being able to participate fully in society,” said Michael Silverman, the Executive Director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund in New York City. “Many transgender people have identification that doesn’t look like they are and isn’t in fact who they are.”

Bryan Ellicott, 24, is suing the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation over a claim that Parks employees discriminated against him when they wouldn’t let him use the men’s changing room at a Staten Island pool last summer. Mr. Ellicott, a transgender man employed by the city’s Office of Emergency Management, said the ID legislation was critically important.

“It makes me feel like more of a New Yorker than I was before,” Mr. Ellicott said. “But we are still without other protections.”